Thursday, April 14, 2016

National Gallery Scotland Ruben's study for St. Ambrose

Thank You to Joanne at the National Gallery. She has been so helpful as have all the staff.I am very grateful for the warm welcome.

Very small thumbnail drawing of Rubens study for St. Ambrose

You can see how small this is in my journal.

I forgot to take an earlier stage, this is about an hour and half into the study. Each time I paint in the museum I feel grateful, pumped- up and humbled.

I did do a light imprimatura and a painted sketch including a kind of value map...now I think I am I just trying to get some color and values and keep thinking about the whole painting.

Someone came by and took my picture and emailed it to me! Thank you to all the people who were so respectful of my time but also encouraged me with words of support. I can see here that I made his ear too long!

A little further along. It is suggested that this is an alla prima portrait study. But I am convinced he did not do this all in one sitting. There are some hints at an underpainting and some surface scumble that had to be done when the pass beneath was "set up".

I took these last two just before cleaning up...I did tweak two little areas but I didn't bother to re-document. Yep, that ear is too long...oh well, maybe St. Ambrose is known for his fine listening skills!